Review: Game of Thrones Season 6 Ep 3 – Oathbreaker

One of the downsides to last week’s episode of Game of Thrones is that the next episode, Oathbreaker, was always going to have a tough act to follow. Like seeing Nirvana come off the stage and Nick Jonas climbing on, there was a palpable air of disappointment with every passing minute.

Ah crap, I left the oven on

Jon Snow opened proceedings with the kind of existential crisis one might expect to undergo upon returning from the dead. Davos tried to ease him back into life with some of his plain-speaking pub wisdom but, for the most part, Jon ambled around the episode like a White Walker on barbiturates. Olly, The Snitch That Was Promised, made one last grumpy face before Jon sent living rooms across the world into raptures with a cathartic hanging. We won’t miss you Olly, but was I the only one warming to the intractable Thorne?

Bran had another peek into the past, which gave book fanboys the chance to cream themselves over the legendary swordsmanship of Arthur Dayne. Those who are familiar with the Sword of the Morning might have hoped that his death had taken the form of a noble sacrifice or something similarly elegant. But he was shivved in the back of the neck, prison-style, by Howland Reed. When will you fanboys ever learn? Bran tried to follow the young Ned up into the memory tower but was snapped out of it by Grandfather Tree. Looks like we’ll have to wait until next week to have the worst-kept secret in literature revealed to us.

Crap, I also left my oven on!

In probably the episode’s most significant moment, Lord Umber swears his fealty to the Clown Prince of Winterfell by presenting him with Osha, the wildling woman, and Rickon, the Stark that nobody remembers. Ramsay desperately needs to consolidate his power in the North, and it will be interesting to see if any of his father’s advice about restraint and mercy hit home before Ramsay gutted him like a fish.

At this rate, everyone on Arya’s list will have died peacefully in their sleep by the time she comes to kill them. She got her sight back, but the rather sterile assassin-in-training story arc feels increasingly like a waste of one of the series’ better actresses. In her element when forming complex relationships with the likes of The Hound and Syrio Forel, a dearth of human interaction is slowly sucking the life out of her character. Certainly no fault of the showrunners or Maisie Williams herself, the on-screen decline of Arya as an interesting protagonist is merely a reflection of how much George R.R Martin literally lost the plot in his later books.

Qyburn and Olenna Tyrell made brief but welcome returns as Donny and Marie Lannister mulled over their options. With so many enemies, they are finding it understandably difficult to know where to start, but may I suggest Undead Mountain crushing Pycelle’s head like a grape? The High Sparrow continues to wield his earthy wisdom like a hammer, as even the weak-willed Tommen is becoming a believer.

Zombie leave oven on….

Across the sea, Varys leveraged a traitorous Meereenian in his trademark passive-aggressive way, while Tyrion failed spectacularly to get a conversation going with Greyworm and Missandei, the weird love story nobody asked for. Daenarys, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, Breaker of Shackles/Chains and Queen of the Seven Kingdoms was thrown into a house full of ratchety old crones to die. It would make for a good episode of Big Brother, but it would be nice if she just got her shit together already.

I understand the need for slower-paced episodes to allow the story to progress organically. But Oathbreaker felt much like an hour long tour of Westeros’ least interesting sights. Still, a sprinkling of important developments and Olly getting strung up made this somewhat bearable and sets us up nicely for next week. A solid two and a half bare breasts out of five for Oathbreaker.